Popular belief has it that you should write a thousand words a day if you are to become a real author. That doesn't really sound a lot does it? For example, yesterday's blog post was 345 words. That's over a third of the way there. But if you really do manage to write a thousand words a day, in a year you'd write over 350,000. That's three good sized novels!
If I look back at all the books I've written, it only adds up to about 400,000 words. That's not very good over an eight year period. The crazy thing is though that when I am writing in earnest I tend to write at about 2,000 to 2,500 words a day! I really need to become more disciplined about my writing. There have been several years during which I've written nothing. Shame on me.
So, that's the theme today. A thousand words a day, every day if possible. Little by little they will add up and form themselves into new books. It's not like I have a shortage of things to work on. It's also not like I have a shortage of ideas either. It's like I said, just a matter of discipline. So, onwards and upwards. It's time to write a little more of my book on Project Management...
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I'm a project person, so the 1000 words a day every day forever and always doesn't work for me. I get bored. (It's me, not the novel - I get bored with myself when I swim laps, too, so I don't swim laps!) I write in bursts. I get a 90k novel's first draft done in under a month, using a minimum daily word goal of 3,000. I don't write every day - life happen, or I need a mental rest - but I'm usually done writing in 23-25 writing days. Now, I don't do that every month! I've done 4 such spurts since last November, and will be embarking on another starting Aug 1. That just words for me (maybe it's long-term ADD??)... I spend the other months editing, planning, researching (a lot of history in my books). So don't despair if you're personality isn't the "a little every day" kind! You have lots of company!
ReplyDeleteAnother fine idea from the Steven Pressfield vein... stop when you hit the limit, even if you are really in the flow... it will make restarting tomorrow easier. If you write everything today, tomorrow is hard to get started.
ReplyDeleteA handful of us on Facebook have decided to write 500K words in 2013. That means we vow to write 1,370 words a day. I have partial books on the back burner, and new ideas popping up every day. I haven't made the exact word count each day, but other days I've surpassed the count. So, all in all, I'm still ahead. It's only January though. Only eleven months to go!
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